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Tim is freaking out.
Being Jack has a lot of responsibilities. He finds himself in weekly life-threatening situations, with guns, and bandits, and bandits with guns. He finds himself everywhere between board meetings and back alleys under the guise of the CEO of Hyperion. He kills, and gives speeches, and poses for photoshoots. But in his diverse range of regular activities, never has he found himself here.
Gazing up at the intimidating structure, complete with laser fences, Hyperion soldiers and war loaders, Tim wonders if it would be safer to run for his life than go inside. He weighs up the advantages and disadvantages; in escaping, Tim would have to avoid bullets, turret lasers, grenades, and then find somewhere to hide away on Pandora for the rest of his life while being hunted down by Hyperion and attacked relentlessly by bandits and be wearing the face of the most hated man on the planet…
…But he wouldn’t have to go inside and act like Jack in front of his daughter.
Thousand Cuts is a wasteland, but the Hyperion facility is as immaculate as would be expected as he’s led through the building. None of these people know he isn’t Jack, he knows, but apparently ignoring them is normal enough. Eyes staying focused ahead, strides remaining confident and chin raised, the workers at the Bunker don’t dare to question him. You’re expected, Jack told him. I visit every week, no excuses. He seemed uncharacteristically quiet at the time, as well; the idea of not being able to attend his meeting with Angel had shaken the CEO as much as it shook his body double to have to take his place.
“Why don’t you just reschedule?” he’d asked at the time. “Um, sir.” Jack had simply shaken his head and said it wasn’t acceptable.
“Gotta be there for my baby girl, kiddo. I’m the only person she sees. I can’t – nah, not happening.”
The trip down here comes with a list of rules, all of which will end in Tim’s gruesome death if broken. At the top of the list is not to put Angel in any danger. The clone reckons he can do that easily enough, provided he doesn’t accidentally set off a turret or something. Next is to not let Angel know he’s not Jack – no matter what. That one is harder. Thirdly, and finally, Tim cannot tell anyone what he sees or hears from the end of the meeting with Jack to when he leaves Thousand Cuts after seeing Angel. With a nervous gulp, he had nodded his head hesitantly.
The mission is simple: go in, socialise with Angel, pick up the files she’s prepared and leave. It should be fast. It should be fine. It’ll probably go horribly wrong.
Furthermore to his list of rules, Tim had a briefing on what to expect from Angel. That the list had started with “she’s a goddamn genius” doesn’t fill him with hope for getting through this without her noticing he’s not Jack.
He reaches the door, and security dissipates, leaving him alone with the scan. Swallowing nervously, Tim sets aside everything that feels weird about this situation, saying a solemn, “I love you,” to a girl he’s never met before. It feels heavy on his tongue. He doesn’t like it.
Still, the automatic voice tells him, “Access granted,” and he exhales shakily as he steps through the doorway, glancing back to freedom before he’s locked inside the building.
“Okay,” he mumbles to himself. “You’re okay. You got this.”
Taking the elevator deep underground, he decides he does not have this at all.
The words leave his mouth before he’s actually stepped inside the Control Core Angel – “Hey, baby, it’s me!” – and Tim steps inside the cavernous room, lips parting at the sheer size of it. The first thing he notices is that the room is prepared for an attack, with spaces for turrets in the center and robot digistructing mechanisms dotted around the edges of the space.
Currently, the room itself is devoid of all of this. It is empty, save for the girl sat in the center. Surrounded by a majestic structure of what looks like pipes filled with eridium, she sits cross-legged on a bed, holographic screens floating around her head and two tubes attached to her skull. Her fingertips still where they were reaching for one of the screens, and she turns her head toward him, lowering the hand after a moment of indecision. “Hello, Jack.”
Her voice is something close to monotonous. Still, Tim considers it a victory that she called him Jack. He steps forward, trying not to let his eyes drift around the room as though he were seeing it for the first time – which he is, so it’s difficult – and approaching the bed slowly. “How’re you doing, Angel?” he asks, deliberating momentarily between sitting beside her on the bed and keeping his distance. He decides on the latter.
She frowns, and even from the small distance away he can see how unhealthy she looks. Wide eyes are situated on a gaunt face, pale and thin and frail, and her wrists and waist seem skinny too. Jack had told him about the siren thing, so the tattoos aren’t a surprise, but he can’t help but allow his gaze to drift along her arm for a brief second. Angel seems to hesitate on answering for a moment, but eventually settles on replying, “Good, sir. The research is going well.” Her hand lowers to reach for the files on the bed next to her, and she holds them out to Tim. Assumedly these are the files Jack wanted him to pick up.
“Great! Uh, princess.” Taking them from her, he pretends to have an interested flick through the one on the top, finding himself scanning through words he barely knows the meaning of and reports he can hardly decipher. Closing the cover, he gives Angel a brief, hopefully not too awkward smile, but she seems to be staring up at him with curious, bright blue eyes.
After time passes with neither of them speaking, Tim clears his throat and says, “Been getting up to anything nice?” to which she responds, “You’re not my dad.”
His stomach drops. “W-what?”
“Yup, that confirmed it.” A half-smile is tugging at her lips. “I mean, if your weirdly nice attitude and the fact that I’m currently watching surveillance of Jack on his way to some place in the Highlands didn’t already confirm it.”
Tim stares at her for a moment before she gestures to one of the screens projected in front of her. Nervously, he steps around behind the bed to face the screen, and sees, to his surprise, Jack travelling with a bunch of Hyperion vehicles through the Pandoran wildlife. “Oh,” he hears himself say, and Angel huffs a laugh.
“Jack’s clever, but he’s also pretty stupid sometimes.” Her eyes raise to meet Tim’s, and she turns around on the bed to face him. “My job here is to be the eyes and ears of Pandora, but he thinks he can take a tour around the Highlands without me noticing. He’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Timothy doesn’t know what to say. He’s torn between “you’re really smart” and “I’m gonna die now”. Intelligently, he manages to mumble, “I’m smart now.”
“What?”
“I – shit, I didn’t realise he’d – he’s gonna kill me, ’cause you know I’m not him, and –”
“Hey, no –”
Tim takes a step back, stumbling from the slightly raised platform and tripping backwards before righting himself. His mind is racing; his heart rate is just as fast. He knew he couldn’t do this. He knew it, but he’s still here, and now Jack’s going to kill him because Angel knows Jack ditched out on her.
“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” are the only words that penetrate his panicking mind, and he glances up at her.
“Wait, what?”
Angel is standing up, still so frail, looking as though one step would break her ankle. Apparently, not, though, as she now approaches him with a hand reaching out and resting on his arm solidly. “Calm down,” she tells him. “I’m not gonna tell Jack I know you’re not him. I know – what he gets like.”
Despite her impossibly pale skin, the hand that presses down on his arm reassuringly is warm to the touch, and he stares blankly before saying, again, “Oh.” Tim feels the anxiety receding; with a clearer mind, he presses a hand to his face, and breathes out. His fingertips are trembling. “Man, I thought I was a goner there.”
Angel seems sad at the thought, but moves past. Evidently she knows the punishments Jack would have in line for Tim. She pulls her hand away and says, almost shyly, “I’m gonna take a guess that you’re, uh, Timothy. Most of the other body doubles aren’t as – well.” She tries for a laugh, but it’s strained. “You have a distinguishable personality?”
“I’m Jack,” he finds himself replying, because trusting the young woman not to hand him over to his death is one thing but letting her openly say his former name is another one altogether. “Just Jack.” And the fear must have been apparent in his eyes, because she nods, accepting his decision.
“Okay, Jack,” she replies, humouring him. “Thanks – um, thanks for coming down. Gets kinda lonely in here.”
“Jeez, I can imagine.” He peers at the screens, but they flicker and die swiftly. An alarmed glance back at Angel reveals her to be sheepish as she looks at him.
“There was… a lot of information on those. You probably shouldn’t see it.” She sits back down on the edge of the bed. “I disabled it.”
“You can do that?”
Angel smiles at him, but it seems guarded. “It’s part of the siren powers. Enhancing technology, exploring it, things like that.” Lifting her arm, she gives tattooed fingers a small wiggle. “I’m assuming if Jack trusted you to come here, he warned you about that.”
Exhaling uncomfortably into the large room, Tim nods at that. “You mind me asking why you’re here? I mean, he seems to care about you, but this doesn’t seem exactly…”
“Homely?” she finishes, a bitter edge to her lighthearted voice. “Yeah, he… I probably shouldn’t answer that. It’s a long story, and one he’s not gonna want you to know.”
“Ah,” he replies helpfully, pulling an exaggeratedly awkward face to show he understands. She giggles at the expression. “I – should probably get going, right? Get the files, say hi, prove Jack hasn’t abandoned you… I’ve. I’m done. Am I done?”
Something flashes over Angel’s features, but it’s gone before he can place what it is. She nods stiffly, sinking back down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Three files,” she tells him, eyes not quite meeting his. “Tell Jack I couldn’t get any information on the fourth. He’ll be pissed, but I – I tried.”
Frowning, Tim hesitates. He really wants to leave. Every moment he stays here increases his chance of dying within the next few hours. But at the same time, Angel seems so… alone. His eyes wander around the expansive room, with dim lights and dull neon illuminations, before he drops the files on Angel’s pillow and perches next to her on the end of the bed.
At her questioning glance, Tim mumbles, “I’m not done.”
“What else do you need to –”
“Socialise, Jack told me to socialise.” He pulls up a grin for her. “So, I really gotta ask – what do you do here all day?”
Her eyes light up, and he wonders if he should offer to step in for more of Jack’s appointments with his daughter.